An Systematic Appraisal Study On Strategies Of Improving The Behavior Of Students With Emotional And Behavioural Difficulty

Currently, students with emotional and behavioral difficulties (EBD) within mainstream school were increasingly paid attention by educators. Researchers explore many strategies aimed to improve their behaviors. However, most of these researches were concentrated on the elementary school students rather than the secondary school students since students with older age are deemed to be less likely affected by EBD. But in reality students in secondary schools who suffer from EBD also need to be paid attention. In this sense, study provides an up to date systematic appraisal on exploring the effective strategies to help students with emotional and behavioral difficulties (EBD) within mainstream secondary school to improve their behaviors.The appraisal employed a defined search methodology, specificinclu exclusion criteria and made some recommendations based on the findings of the primary studies. The whole systematic appraisal obtained thirty-three full-text journal articles, which were deemed as meeting the basic requirements of the appraisal. These articles were selected from the reference lists as well as three electronic databases. Only sixteen primary research reports were reviewed while the other papers were excluded due to various reasons:studies which simply described strategies rather than evaluated the effectiveness of strategies; studies which were second data analyses rather than primary research; primary studies which did not aim to evaluate the strategies’effectiveness on helping EBD students to improve their behaviour and so on. Seven papers which were assigned with the higher scores (no less than9out of10and meet all the essential criteria) in the quality checklist contributed to the final findings of the study.The findings indicted strategies in line with a combination of cognitive-behavioral and behavioral approach can be effective in reducing off-task behaviour. Besides, the strategies based on the cognitive-behavioral are useful in helping students to deal with their disruptive and aggressive behaviour as well. However, more attention should be paid to the strategies in line with the systemic and psychotherapeutic theoretical model, due to the lack of primary research resource currently.This systematic appraisal has six chapters. Chapter One is the introduction of the appraisal, introducing the whole topic and project. Chapter Two is a literature overview of the context and the study. Chapter Three explores the methodological nature of the appraisal and the process of conducting the current study. Chapter Four is a presentation of the findings of this systematic appraisal. Chapter Five is the critical discussion of the findings. Chapter Six draws the conclusion of the whole appraisal and presents my own reflection of the current study.